Madison has always been known for having peaceful communities and a minimum of violence and crime. In this apocalyptic future that standard hasn't been threatened thanks to the Henry Vilas Prison. The prison was formerly a zoo that spanned 30 acres, but after the apocalypse it turned in to a suitable location for a prison to be built. Any of the animals that were there before are dead, because there were no adequate food or water rations for them after the zookeepers left. The only hints of life are the remaining shells of tortoises and maybe some bones from corpses that decayed decades ago. The city's government decided that the best thing to do with this property is to turn it into a correctional facility since the enclosures were still intact (For the most part. The wolves may or may not have escaped shortly after the apocalypse). There was some talk about opening it up to the public to add public humiliation to the inmates' sentences, but that would have been ridiculous; people being held in penguin and bear cages was already humiliating enough.
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